Cause and effect myth-making is a flavor is misleading memories, one of the three red flags of bad decision-making that Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead and Sydney Finkelstein wrote about in a Harvard Business Review piece last year (Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions, Feb 2009, 60-66.) The other two are inappropriate self-interest and distorting attachments. The presence of any one of these factors can through off the judgment of the best and smartest decision-makers.

What happens is that our brains engage in “high levels of unconscious thinking.” The end result is that you think you know the right thing to do or the right decision to make, but it’s colored by the undue influence of a past experience, a strong attachment to someone involved in the situation or your own interests in the outcome. According to the HBR article, you can’t help making a bad decision, if any of these factors are involved, unless you take some counter-balancing action. They recommend these steps (I’m paraphrasing):

• Get exposed to additional experience and thinking,
• Build in more discussion and chances to hear dissenting views, and
• Seek additional review.

Another look at the foibles of our psychological makeup is available in the book Sway by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. The book’s subtitle is “The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.” Sway is an exciting, if somewhat disturbing tour of the “hidden currents and forces” underneath our ordinary exteriors. These include (and I’m paraphrasing here too):

• loss aversion (the willingness to do almost anything to avoid losses),
• value attribution (the tendency to go with first impressions);
• and the diagnosis bias (ignoring all evidence that contradicts these first impressions).

Sadly, the Brafman’s report that “the the more there is on the line, the easier it is to get swept up into an irrational decision.” They too have suggestions for working against our instinctual responses, and there is overlap with the HBR steps, but these proposals seem to involve a little more personal work.

To combat our fierce desire to avoid loss, the key is to take a long term view. It turns out that the loss we fear most is short term. The antidote to value attribution is a commitment to observation, to seeing things for what they really are. And, overcoming a diagnosis bias involves truly keeping an open mind. It also helps to open up decision-making processes to others.

So, if you are engaged in any decision-making, it may be worth your attention to these instinctual “hidden currents.” Particularly if the decisions you need to make are very important, there’s a good chance that you can improve your decision-making outcome by opening your process up to review, dissenting opinions, and consideration of the long-term perspective. That’s what the psychological studies are saying, in any case!

For models, one good source is the 2008 Ithaka Report, Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources. It is specifically aimed, as the title says, at online resources, but the revenue models are broadly envisioned.

One of the best pieces of advice the report gives is that we “need to adopt a more comprehensive definition of ‘sustainability’.” In other words, when it comes to thinking about sustaining our projects and initiatives, we have to consider a mix of solutions. The Ithaka Report divides its suggested models into those that “tax” the direct beneficiary of the service, and those that ask an indirect beneficiary to share in the support for the service.

direct

• subscription or one-time payment
• pay-per-use
• contributor pays

indirect

• in-kind donations, including host institution funds
• corporate sponsorships
• advertisement
• philanthropic funding
• licensing of content

There are pros and cons for each of these models, and so it’s a good idea to consider the fine points if you are thinking about pursuing one or more of these paths. In my case, I need to look deeply into an approach for a direct beneficiary payment model. I manage a new service that has the usual infrastructure and labor costs, but it also has particular (external) use-related costs.

These are the kinds of things I need to think about now: I didn’t learn about them in library school, and so I’ve been borrowing examples from partner institutions, reading business texts, and asking for lots of help. It’s an interesting position in which to be, and I imagine more and more of us will find ourselves in this place. If the Ithaka report is an indicator, this is one trend that has a real growth curve. What does it look like from your perspective?

The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) released employees early on Thursday and Friday as a measure of safety. On Thursday, the message read:

We have just learned that a verdict in the Johannes Mehserle trial will be announced within the next hour or two. To ensure your safety in the event of demonstrations or other civil unrest, UCOP employees may leave work now and work from home for the remainder of the day if they’d like. This is a precaution, but given the tensions surrounding this trial, it seems like a prudent one.

Sears at 20th & Broadway, Oakland

UCOP wasn’t alone in this precaution, with all of downtown Oakland emptying out. The BART platforms were mobbed and roadways jammed.

Those of you who have some familiarity with business continuity will recognize this scenario as the low end of business interruption, however disturbing it felt to us as we made our ways home, wondering how much damage was going to be done to the city later that afternoon or evening.

I say “low end” because we had over an hour of advance warning, and we were able to use a functioning public transportation system to travel to our homes. In addition, those of us who were prepared to work remotely, with laptops and VPN, were able to continue working, because the business disruption did not consist of damage to our server infrastructure.

At an even more basic level, UCOP management was able to send us an email message announcing the early release time!

In business continuity planning, the scenarios that really make you think creatively are those in which you can’t send an email message. The phones lines are down too. For serious planning, you have to assume that BART too is no longer running.

What would cause such a calamity, you might ask? Well, here in California, we have these things called earthquakes…

This past week, when we had everything working for us, the exodus was very orderly, if crowded. The exercise, if I can call it that, reminded me to think about whether or not we will be able to handle a more challenging disruption when it comes, as the scientists say it will.

Are you ready for the most likely disruptions in your location?

Image courtesy of Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.

This is not a trivial debate, because even the academic world is increasingly driven by the speed to market of downloadable apps for laptops and mobile devices. In the agile world…or at least, among the managers of (and consultants to) the tech folks in the agile world…there is some discussion of what is called “management agility.” This heady stuff actually appears to be a code word for infusing business decision-making with just-in-time statistics. The truly agile will adopt decentralized decision-making models, putting the power to make or break the business into the hands of the people who are closest to the work itself.

Running counter to this model is the great momentum toward building services at the network level. In order to do this, CDL–a collaboration itself–has joined with other universities and research institutions in several major network-level super-collaborations, you might call them.

So, this means that we, and our partners, have super-sized collaborative decision-making structures and super-sized strategic planning structures. Sounds more like a recipe for atherosclerosis than agility, doesn’t it?

We don’t have any choice but to face this challenge. We must join together in these network-level initiatives in order to achieve both the economies of scale and the breadth of coverage and vision they afford us. Therefore, we have to seek every opportunity to streamline our collective processes so that we don’t come so late to the party, we’re only in time to pick up the recycling.

Here are some of the things that this means in practice:

• We are working to infuse our collective decision-making with statistics, so that we can make more informed (and, we hope, better) decisions. An example of this is the value-based strategy developed for journal renewal assessment.
• In our network level collaborations, we work to fashion organizations that have mechanisms both for long-range thinking, such as strategic planning, and also short time-frame operational decision-making. An example of this is the governance of HathiTrust.
• And, as we work with these and other efforts, we are now consciously asking ourselves, is there a quicker way to do this? Can a smaller group be deputized to make this decision? Can we fast-tract this inquiry, process, or project?

These are works in progress, and we move forward and then take steps backwards. Sometimes communications break down, or decision-making bogs down. But it is critically important that we are on this path, along with our partners. What other ideas do you have?

1.Treat it like a gift. Assume that the person giving you feedback wants you to be successful and that’s why they’re reaching out to you. You can (and should) encourage others to regularly share their thoughts about your performance by reacting as if you were receiving a gift.  Thank them for their candor. Request clarifying examples and ask probing questions to make sure you understand their comments. Don’t immediately dismiss awkward comments by being defensive; sometimes people need help to clarify their thoughts. Unless they are truly being rude, give them a chance by listening respectfully.

In the end, you have complete control to use their feedback or discard it. It’s better to know how others perceive your performance — even if it can sting a little at times — than to be in the dark.

2. Practice OBF. What is it? Objective Behavioral Feedback puts the emphasis on what you observe someone did or said and the impact it had on you or others. Why is it good? The OBF technique is specific, timely, set in context, respectful, looks to future performance, and it’s useful. It also takes some practice!

OBF is based on:

• behavior not personality
• description not judgment
• observation not inference

OBF describes:

• what you see a person do
• what you hear a person do
• what you read that a person wrote
• what you see or hear a person do/say as a result of someone else’s actions (impact)
• what YOU do, say or feel as a result of someone else’s actions (impact)

For example:

The behavior: At the team meeting on Wednesday, you arrived ten minutes after the start of the meeting. I noticed that everyone, including me, stopped what they were doing and directed their attention at you.
The impact: The impact on me was that I lost my focus.

The idea is to describe objectively how a person’s behavior affects you and others. Notice how you are not making a judgment. Instead, you’re describing what you observed.  This technique is an integral part of the University of California’s Management Skills Assessment Program for employees.

3. Make a compliment sandwich. This simple technique is especially useful when you have negative feedback to give. Start your comments with what worked about the person’s performance or behavior. Next, clearly state what didn’t work.  Finally, end with some positive reinforcement: suggesting steps to remedy the situation, asking them for their ideas, or simply offering your encouragement. This technique is as good for the giver as the receiver. Why? It encourages the giver to shift their perspective and glean something positive from the situation before they proceed with their feedback.  This tried-and-true method works best if you balance the negative and positive.

In all cases, be specific and give (or ask for) examples. While “great presentation” is a boost to a speaker’s confidence, it doesn’t provide tangible insight for their next presentation. A better comment would be “Your demographics chart helped me understand the issue” or “I felt engaged when you walked into the audience and asked questions.”

“If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Now It’s Your Turn

Find other useful tips on giving and receiving feedback in these articles.

How to handle negative feedback in six simple steps

Provide Feedback that has an Impact

Do you have a favorite technique?

Share your feedback on these tips. You can comment below or email Leslie and me at yourlifeatwork@gmail.com.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

Courtesy of the California Historical Society, North Baker Research Library, San Francisco, CA

Earlier this month we marked the 104th anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake. The anniversary brought to my mind the confluence of Mother Nature and human nature. In this event, just as with Iceland’s spectacular ash cloud(s), we are witness to events beyond human control. But when you look at the fallen buildings in the photograph to the left, you see the work of many human hands.

I wrote about earthquakes once before when I was talking about a habit of resilience. I was trying to make some space in the resilience argument for learning from the devastation before moving on. I’m helped in this by something I heard in March. I attended one of the Distinguished Lecture Series at UC Berkeley’s School of Information to see Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Her topic was Entrepreneurship As An Extreme Sport.

Early on in her talk, she introduced an idea that comes from her book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: the Failure Resume.

Seelig reminded us that we hire people with experience, and experience means both the good and the bad. Seelig insisted that it is very important to record and learn from the bad. When you write an ordinary resume, you draw out the key accomplishments of your career to date. With a failure resume, your goal is to capture the lessons you’ve learned from your significant failures. She ended with these three points: “try lots of things, see what works, and don’t be afraid of failure.”

It seems to me that it’s getting a little harder to adopt this attitude right now, with such severe budget cutbacks. It used to be that innovation thrived in Library Land, to the extent that it did, thanks to the ”lots of copies” model. In other words, there was enough innovation funding to support many explorations into a problem space, and collectively, we could afford to fail or partially succeed in a number of them, just to learn where the real winners were.

Now, in order to do the big explorations we absolutely must do, we have to band together in big consortia. So, there are fewer players, altogether. We can afford fewer losses. We’d better make sure we learn all the lessons from each mistake we make.

Based on old and new research into various forms of stress response, Joshua D. Margolis and Paul G. Stolz have developed what they call a “resilience regimen.” They claim that, in order to “respond quickly and constructively in a crisis,” managers need to learn a new way of thinking, turning away from looking for the cause of problems or challenges, and instead learn to focus on how best to respond to the new situation.

Margolis and Stolz organize their approach into four “lenses:” control, impact, breadth and duration. In all four areas, the idea is to change any old habit(s) you may have leading you to think about difficulties in terms of causes, external forces, underlying events, and enduring timeframes. Control refers to aspects of the situation that you can directly influence, looking forward. Impact pertains to identifying what positive, immediate impact you might have on the situation. Breadth points to your ability to reduce the downside or maximize the potential upside of the crisis, focusing on the transformative opportunities it might present. And, duration represents the capacity to envision what you want life to look like on the other side of the crisis.

In each of these four areas, Margolis and Stolz suggest ways to engage colleagues in this forward-looking change of mind, thereby providing leadership for the difficult period. And, they suggest that those of who work in fields and organizations that experience ongoing stress need to develop resiliency even more than most.

I find this to be a tall order and also counter-intuitive. How can we take meaningful action to change the direction things are headed if we don’t understand at least something about how we got into the current fix? Consider the poor souls in Haiti and Chile, looking at the piles of rubble that used to be their homes. Assuming they have the resources to do so, if they simply put the pieces of their homes back together, ignoring what caused them to collapse, aren’t they exposed to the risk that the same thing will happen all over again?

Maybe the important takeaway from Margolis and Stolz’s work is to avoid dwelling on the past. Perhaps staying focused on the reasons for difficulties too long can make it hard to act. The key is to turn attention to what is in front of us. These are the kinds of questions they suggest we ask ourselves as we face the trying times ahead:

• “What aspects of the situation can I directly influence to change the course of this adverse event?”
• “What positive effect might my efforts have on those around me?”
• “What sequence of steps can we put together as a team, and what processes can we develop and adopt, to see us through to the other side of this hardship?”